Sharpe 18 - Sharpe's Siege (15 page)

The conscripts primed their pieces. Some had forgotten to take their ramrods out of their musket barrels, but it did not matter.

“Aim low!” Sharpe's voice was harsh. He knew most troops fired high. “Aim at their balls! Fire!” The sword swept down.

The volley smashed out, the sound of the muskets deafening as the heavy weapons leaped back into bruised shoulders. The smoke, stinking of rotten eggs, made its fog.

“Lie down!” Sharpe shouted. He saw astonished faces and his voice rose in anger. “Lie down! Lie down!”

The Marines, puzzled, dropped flat. Sharpe knelt to one side of the rolling, poisonous cloud of musket smoke.

The French Company had shaken as the volley struck home. Just like a man punched in the belly the whole Company seemed to fold, then the officers and sergeants, shouting orders, pushed the ranks back into place and Sharpe saw how the rear files had to step over the writhing and the dead left by the Marine's well-aimed volley.

The French commander ignored the Riflemen on his flank. They could be dealt with after the redcoats. ,Tirez"

For a new Company, unblooded, it was a good response. Sixty or seventy muskets fired at the gunsmoke, but the Marines were flat and the conscripts fired high.

“Go for them! Go!” Sharpe was triumphant now. This one Company had been the last danger, but he had drawn their sting by laying his men flat. “On your feet! On your feet! Go! Cheer, you bastards!” This was the moment for noise, the moment for terror.

The Marines, who a second before had been the target for a controlled, tight volley, scrambled unscathed to their feet and charged. They yelled as if they were boarding an enemy ship. Lieutenant Fytch fired his pistol wildly, then tried to drag his heavy sword from its scabbard.

The conscripts, staring through their own musket-smoke, saw the unharmed enemy coming with long bayonets and, like the first two Companies at the convoy's head, broke.

Some were slow, and those the Marines caught and pinned to the ground with bayonets. A mounted officer, scarlet-faced and furious, charged at the redcoats, but Sharpe lunged with his sword, caught the horse's hindquarters and the beast turned, teeth snapping, as the officer hacked down with his infantry sword.

The blades met, clashed, and the shock ran up Sharpe's arm. The horse reared, lashed with its hooves as it was trained to do, but Sharpe backswung the sword into the beast's mouth as he was trained to do.

The animal twisted, the officer kicked his feet out of the stirrups and, as the horse fell to one side, nimbly threw himself clear. The horse collapsed off balance, lips bleeding, then scrambled to its feet as if nothing was amiss.

“Surrender,” Sharpe said to the officer.

The reply, whatever it meant, did not signify surrender. The Frenchman's sword blade flickered out in an expert lunge. The man's horse was now cropping the grass and the Frenchman reached with his spare hand for its bridle.

Sharpe lunged, knew that the man would counterattack, so immediately stepped back. The blade duly came for him, skewered thin air, and Sharpe's heavy blade cracked down on to the sword hilt, driving the weapon down, and Sharpe stepped forward, brought his knee up, then used the ugly, iron guard of his sword to punch the officer's face. “Surrender, you crapaud bastard!”

The officer was on the grass, sword forgotten and hands clutched to his crotch. He was gasping for breath, moaning, and Sharpe decided that constituted a surrender. He kicked the man's sword into the ditch, pulled the horse towards him, and hauled himself clumsily into the saddle. He wanted the extra height to see what happened on his small, well-chosen battlefield.

The French had run. A Company of them were being organized a quarter mile north, but they posed no immediate problem. A few survivors still clung to the waggons, some died from bayonet thrusts, but most were being taken prisoner. The waggons were otherwise abandoned and Sharpe guessed their drivers, with other fugitives, had fled into the beech woods. “Captain Palmer?”

Palmer seemed astonished to see Sharpe on horseback. “Sir?”

“One squad of men into the beech trees. Flush the damn place clear. Don't be cautious about it! Scare the bastards!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Captain Frederickson!” Sharpe twisted the horse towards the far side of the road. “Keep that Company busy!” Sharpe pointed to the north. “Take half Minver's men and press them, William, press them!”

There were picquets to be set on the flanks, the wounded to take into the shelter of the waggons, and the waggons themselves to explore. The two coaches, harness-horses shivering, were brought forward. One was empty, the other contained two women who sat, terrified, with smelling salts uncapped. “Put a guard on them, Captain Palmer! Unharness the horses.” Sharpe would leave the women where they were, but the horses, like the oxen, would be scattered into the meadows, Some men would have advised killing the animals to deprive the French of their future use, but Sharpe could not bear to give that order.

The oxen lumbered away, protesting under the prodding of the bayonets. One beast, wounded by a musket bullet in the small battle, was slaughtered and Sharpe watched two

Marines cutting up the steaming, warm flesh that would make a fine supper tonight.

Other Marines swarmed over the waggons, ripping the canvas covers away and slashing the tie-ropes. Barrels and boxes were uncovered and thrown to the road's verges where the prisoners, shivering and terrified, sat under guard.

It had taken twenty-five minutes of savagery, fire and smoke and bluff and blood, and a French convoy, deep in France and guarded by a half Battalion of troops, was taken. Better still, and even more inexplicable, Sharpe's headache was entirely gone.

CHAPTER 11

Lieutenant of Marines Fytch, to whom Sharpe had hardly spoken since they had marched inland, brought the civilians to Major Sharpe. The Lieutenant herded them at pistol-point until told by Sharpe to put his damned toy away. Fytch, his martial ardour offended by the Rifleman, gestured at the four stout and worried looking men. “They're from the town, sir. Buggers want to surrender.”

The four men, all dressed in good woollen clothes, smiled nervously at the mounted officer. They each wore the white cockade which was the symbol of the exiled King Louis XVIII and thus an emblem of anti-Napoleonic sentiment. The sight of the cockade, and the evident willingness of the four men to embrace a British victory, were uncomfortable reminders to Sharpe of Bampfylde's hopes. Perhaps Bordeaux, like this small town, was ripe for rebellion? He should, Sharpe knew, have interrogated a captured French officer by now, but his determination to obey Elphinstone's privately given orders, had made him ignore the duty.

“Kindly ask them,” Sharpe said to Fytch who evidently had some French, “if they still wish to surrender when they understand that we will be leaving here this afternoon and may not be back for some months?”

The Mayor's monarchical enthusiasm evaporated swiftly. He smiled, bowed, fingered the cockade nervously, and backed away. But he still wished to assure the English milord that anything the town could offer his men would be available. They had only to ask for Monsieur Calabord.

“Get rid of him,” Sharpe said. “Politely! And get those damned civilians off the bridge!” Townspeople, hearing the crackle of musketry, had come to view the battle. The one-legged toll-keeper was vainly trying to make them pay for the privilege of their grandstand view.

Frederickson's rifles snapped from the north as he harried the broken infantry away from the scene of their defeat. Two waggoners and four cavalrymen, hands held high, were being prodded from the beech trees towards the disconsolate prisoners. Marines were piling captured muskets in a pile.

The luckiest Marines were rifling the waggons. Much of the plunder was useless to a looter. There were vats of yellow and black paint that the French mixed to colour their gun-carriages, and which now the Marines spilled on to the road to mingle with the blood and ox-dung. Two of the waggons held nothing but engineer's supplies. There were coils of three inch white-cable, sap forks, cross-cut saws, bench-hammers, chalk-lines, scrapers, felling-axes, augers, and barrels of Hambro` line. There were spare cartouches for the infantry, each bag filled with a wooden block drilled to hold cartridges. Other waggons held drag-chains, crooked-sponges, relievers, bricoles, wad-hooks, sabot-bracers, and hand-spikes. There were garlands for the stacking of round-shot and even band instruments including a Jingling Johnny that a proud Marine paraded about the stripped waggons and shook so that the tiny bells mounted on the wooden frame made a strangely festive sound in the bleak, cold day. Another man banged the clash-pans until Sharpe curtly ordered him to drop the bloody cymbals.

On one waggon there were crates of tinned food. The French had recently invented the process and it was a miracle to Sharpe how such food stayed fresh over weeks or even months. Bayonets prised open lids, and jellied chickens and joints of lamb were hacked into portions so that men's faces, already blackened by powder smoke, were now smeared with grease. Sharpe accepted a leg of chicken and found it delicious. He ordered two dozen of the tins put aside for Frederickson's Riflemen.

And in the centre two waggons, strapped down by three inch cable and covered by a double wrapping of tarpaulin, was powder. Barrels of black powder that were destined for the mortars at Bayonne, and coils of quick-match to be cut into shell-fuses. “Lieutenant Minver!”

“Sir?”

“These waggons! Drag them to the bridge. I want the powder packed in the roadway.” It would not be a scientifically controlled explosion, as Hogan so long ago had taught Sharpe to devise, but it might seriously weaken the new stone structure with its proud, carved urns, and the purpose of Sharpe's incursion was to slow the French supplies. A blown bridge, demanding a detour through an old town, would cause a temper-fraying delay. “And pack all the other waggonloads round it!”

That would take at least two hours. In the meantime captured spades dug graves in the cold soil of the water meadows. A French cavalryman, wearing the odd plaited pigtails at his temples, the cadenettes, was buried first. French prisoners did the work for the twenty-two dead Frenchmen, while the Marines dug graves for their three dead.

“Congratulations, sir,” Palmer said.

“Your men did well, Captain.” Sharpe meant it. He had been impressed by the steadiness of the Marines, and by their swiftness to reload muskets. Those qualities won battles, and battles changed history.

Patrick Harper, a tinned chicken in one hand, brought Sharpe a leather bag taken from the abandoned carriage. “It's all Frog scribble, sir.”

Sharpe looked through the papers and suspected they were just the kind of thing Michael Hogan prayed for. Hogan might be dead now, but the papers would be a goldmine to whoever had succeeded to his job.

“Guard them, Patrick.”

Harper had also helped himself to a fine, silver-chased pistol that had been discarded in the carriage.

The sun, paled to a silver disc by new cloud and mist, was low. A cold wind, the first wind since Sharpe had spared Killick's life, sighed chill over the graves. A scream came from the farm, and a cheer went up from the Marines searching the last waggon as they found wine bottles packed in sawdust. A corporal brought a bottle to Sharpe. “Sir?”

“Thank you, Corporal.” Sharpe held the bottle out to Harper who obligingly struck the neck with the blade of his sword-bayonet. The scream sounded again. A girl's scream.

Sharpe dropped the wine and put his heels back. Prisoners twisted aside as the horse plunged down the bank, jumped a shallow ditch, then Sharpe reined the beast right, ducked under a bare-branched apple tree, and twisted left. Pounding feet sounded behind him, but all Sharpe could see was a man running away, running towards the river and Sharpe put his heels back again.

The man was a Marine. He was clutching his red jacket loose in one hand and holding up his unbuttoned breeches with his other. He looked over his shoulder, saw Sharpe, and dodged to his right.

“Stop!”

The man did not stop, but ducked through a gap in the thorn hedge that tore his jacket from his grasp. He abandoned it and began running across the field. Sharpe forced his horse at the gap, kicked it through, and drew his sword. The man was stumbling, flailing for balance on the tussocks of the meadow, then the flat of the heavy sword, swept down in a clumsy curve, took him on the side of the head. He fell, uncut by the blade, and Sharpe circled the horse back to the fallen man.

It was all because of the farm girl; the green-eyed, pale, shivering girl whom the man had dragged into the scanty hay-store and attacked. She was now sitting, trembling, with the scraps of her torn clothing drawn around her thin body.

“She asked for it,” the Marine, taken back to the dung-stinking farmyard, said.

“Shut your face!” Harper had appointed himself Master-at-Arms. “She wouldn't be bloody screaming and you wouldn't be bloody running, would you?”

“Fetch her some clothes,” Sharpe snarled at one of the Marines who had formed a circle about the prisoner. “Captain Palmer! You warned this man?”

Palmer, pale-faced, nodded.

“Well?” Sharpe insisted on a verbal acknowledgement.

“Aye, aye, sir.” Palmer swallowed. “But the girl wasn't raped, sir.”

“You mean she screamed too loudly. But you know what the orders are, don't you?” This question was addressed to all the Marines who stared with undisguised hostility at the Rifle Officer who threatened to hang one of their own comrades. There was silence as Sharpe rammed his sword home. “Now back to your duties! All of you!” He jumped off the horse.

Captain Palmer, a Marine sergeant, Harper and Sharpe stayed with the prisoner. The story came slowly at first, then quickly. It had been attempted rape. The girl, the Marine said, had encouraged him, but her screams and the bruises and scratches on her thin arms told a different story.

“Matthew Robinson's a steady man, sir.” Palmer walked with Sharpe to the end of the farmyard. Sharpe could see that Minver's Riflemen had managed to get the first powder waggon to the end of the bridge, but, faced with the slope of the roadway, could get it no further. They were now rolling the powder barrels to the crown of the arch.

“You know what the Standing Orders are,” Sharpe said bleakly.

“It won't happen again, sir.” Palmer sounded contrite.

“I know damned well it won't happen again!” Sharpe, hating the necessity of the moment, snapped the words. “That's why we're hanging the bastard!”

“I mean we don't need Robinson's death as an example, sir,” Palmer pleaded.

“I'm not doing it as an example.” Sharpe turned and gestured towards the farmer and his wife. “I'm doing it for them! If the French people think we're savages, Palmer, then they'll fight us. You know what it's like having guerrilleros up your backside when you fight? Every waggon we send up from the coast will have to be guarded by a Battalion! Every one! That's how we beat the French out of Spain, Captain, not just by hammering the bastards in battle, but because half their armies were guarding waggons against Spanish peasants. Peasants like them!” Again he pointed to the French couple.

“The girl wasn't, harmed, sir,” Palmer said stubbornly. “And we've proved by our action here that we can offer protection.”

“And the story is spread about,” Sharpe said, “that a man can rape a girl and his officers will condone it.”

Palmer stood his ground. “If Robinson was one of your men, sir, one of your Riflemen, would you.”

“Yes,” Sharpe said, and knew instantly that if he was Palmer, and Bampfylde was the officer demanding the hanging, then Sharpe would fight just like Palmer for the life of his man. God damn it, but, years before, Sharpe had even defended the most useless man in his Light Company in just this same situation.

Palmer saw Sharpe's hesitation. “Robinson fought damned well, sir. Doesn't your Field Marshal mitigate punishment for bravery in the field?”

Wellington had been known to cancel a half-dozen hangings because the prisoners' Battalions had fought well. Sharpe swore, hating the decision. “Orders are orders, Mr Palmer.”

“Just as I believe we're ordered to hang privateers and deserters, sir?” Palmer said it bluntly, daring Sharpe's wrath.

“Damn your insolence.” Sharpe said it without conviction, almost as a sop to the weakness he was showing. “You will apologize to the girl and to her parents. Give them this.” He took two of the forged silver ten-franc pieces from his pouch.

“Thank you, sir.” Palmer beamed as he took the coins.

“I'm not done with him,” Sharpe warned. “RSM Harper!”

Harper pretended not to notice his restoration to Regimental Sergeant Major. “Sir?”

“Take Marine Robinson and the girl's father round the back of the barn. I want you at the bridge in ten minutes!”

“Do I need a rope, sir?”

“No. But give the father his chance.” God damn it, Sharpe thought, but he had broken orders again. First he spared a damned American, now a Marine, and what was the point of orders if sentimentality weakened a man into disregarding them?

“Thank you, sir,” Palmer said again.

“You won't thank me when you see what Patrick Harper can do to a man. You'll be carrying Robinson home.”

“Better than burying him, sir.”

The incident put Sharpe into a sour mood, worsened by the feeling that he had shown weakness. Twice now he had backed out of an execution and he wondered if it was because he had taken a respectable wife. Old soldiers claimed that marriage did weaken a man, and Sharpe suspected they were right. His foul mood was not helped by the agonizing slowness with which the powder was being crammed between the bridge's balustrades. Lieutenant Fytch had ordered the toll-keeper and his wife out of their house and the woman, who had earlier threatened Sharpe with her blunderbuss, was now weeping for the loss of her home. Her husband, stumping on his wooden leg, was dragging belongings out to the road.

The sound of Frederickson's rifle fire had finished and Sharpe saw the Company marching back towards the bridge. That meant the French had gone altogether, though he knew Sweet William would have left picquets to guard against their return.

Using the Marines to help, the Riflemen hastened the setting of the explosives. The other supplies, destined for Soult's army, were heaped about the powder barrels. Frederickson sounded his whistle to pull in the picquets, while a squad of Minver's men pushed the townspeople further away from the bridge. It was getting dark, and Sharpe wanted to be moving.

“Sir!” Patrick Harper, who had silently reappeared at the bridge, pointed northwards. “Sir!”

Two horsemen had appeared. They had not come by the road, but instead, perhaps forewarned by the retreating infantry, had made a wide detour through the fields. Now, with white handkerchiefs skewered to their sword-tips as makeshift flags of truce, they galloped their horses towards the bridge.

They were good horses, corn fed and with strong hindquarters. Both took the soft, plunging ground like thoroughbreds and were scarcely blowing as they were curbed beside Sharpe who waved down the cautious rifles of Frederickson's newly arrived Company.

The Comte de Maquerre, dressed in his Chasseurs Britannique uniform beneath his pale cloak, nodded cautiously at Sharpe. The other rider was a slim, middle-aged man in civilian clothes. He had a face of such startling and pleasant honesty that Sharpe's weariness and self-disgust seemed to vanish like frost beneath the rising sun. The man was so calm and self-composed that Sharpe instinctively smiled in response to his greeting, which consisted of mild astonishment at the evidence of carnage on the road and a frank expression of admiration for Sharpe's success.

The man was French, but spoke good English, and his loyalty was proclaimed by the white cockades that he wore, not only on his brown cloak, but also on his bicorne hat. “I am Jules Favier, assistant to the Mayor of Bordeaux.” He spoke as he climbed from the saddle. “And I am at your service, Major.”